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Axial connects advisors with buyers who opted into its lower-middle-market deal network. Vequity serves a different purpose: identifying the buyers beyond an opt-in network and the add-ons your portfolio should pursue before those companies are for sale, with a rationale for every name.
170,000
deals over 26 years
2.3M
company profiles, mapped by capability
1,900+
firms and portfolio companies with declared proprietary acquisition criteria
470 investment firms and 1,481 portfolio companies
Where they differ
Data model
Deals posted by advisors and buyers’ stated criteria on the network
Starts from 170,000 deals and why they happened
Classification
NAICS codes and keywords
Vequity Investment Taxonomy plus capability tags
Deal history
Deals marketed on the network
170,000 transactions with the acquirer’s stated rationale
Buyer intent
Buyer-declared criteria on the network
1,900+ firms and portfolio companies with declared proprietary acquisition criteria
Rationale per name
Not provided
A written rationale for every target and buyer
Portfolio pre-population
You build each search
Every company you own arrives with a draft pipeline
Users
Free for advisors; buyers pay a fee at close
Unlimited users per firm and per portfolio company
Best for
Distributing a lower-middle-market deal to buyers who opted in
Finding the buyers who did not opt in, and the add-ons before they are for sale
Competitor descriptions are from the vendor’s public materials as of October 2026.
When to use both
Use Axial to distribute an active lower-middle-market deal to buyers on its network. Use Vequity to find what each portfolio company should buy before it is listed, with a scored add-on pipeline and a rationale for every target. When you sell, the same system identifies the strategic and sponsor buyers whose gaps your company fills.